After battering and busting up Urijah Faber en route to his 29th straight victory, newly-crowned interim bantamweight champion Renan Barao proved to the world at UFC 149 that his win streak was the product of hard work and dedication, not the culmination of years spent crushing cans that seemed to be the case for a certain somebody making his long awaited debut just one fight before. This is not to say that Hector Lombard doesn’t push himself as a fighter — by all accounts he does the exact opposite, in fact — but to say that Lombard was the first fighter to come to the UFC on a huge win streak, only to have said streak invalidated almost immediately would be a bold faced lie (Jason Reinhardt, anyone? How about our buddy Sean McCorkle?).

But when guys who have spent years fighting below their level come up short on the big stage, it just makes it all the more impressive to see the Barao’s and Ryan Jimmo‘s of the world succeed in living up to their hype. Simply put, it’s no coincidence that most of the guys with the greatest win streaks in the sport are all champions, and the rest are either made up (I shall refer you to the infamous tale of Craig Rehage as my primary example) or busted as soon as the fighter faces some legit competition.

However, when trying to determine which champion has the most impressive win streak of them all, we surprisingly found ourselves at odds. Some of us went with the obvious choice in Anderson Silva, some of us thought that Jon Jones’ streak was more impressive, and ReX thought that Ronda Rousey’s run stood atop them all before snatching a copy of her ESPN magazine shoot and running off to our executive bathroom. He has yet to return.

So as is often the case when we are struggling to decide upon an issue, we will hand the power over to you, Potato Nation. After the jump, you will find a survey. The topic: “Which Current Champion Has the Greatest Win Streak in MMA?” You WILL vote on this poll, and you WILL leave us your convincing arguments in the comments section. Sound good?

A convincing argument could be made for JDS boasting the single most remarkable contender streak in UFC history. If you’ve failed to be impressed by Junior’s seven consecutive triumphs since entering the UFC back in October 2008 — and the level of competition they came against — then you’re evidently not a very excitable person. In fact, it’s likely that you possess the same stoicism characterised by “Cigano’s” adversary this weekend, Señor Velasquez.

You see, unbeaten runs aren’t common in the UFC. This isn’t the world of boxing, where fighters are fed 20 journeymen before they get thrown to the lions. And that’s precisely why the MMA community purrs over such immaculate resumes. So which UFC fighters built up the most impressive win streaks en route to their first title shot? These five come to mind…

For the purposes of these lists, we only included fighters whose UFC win streaks were unbroken by draws or no-contests. However, if a fighter competed for different promotions between stints in the UFC, only the UFC fights are counted. If we’ve accidentally omitted somebody, please let us know in the comments section. And as with our previous stats lists, timelines, and leaderboards, we’ll periodically update this page when there are changes. Now let’s get to the numbers…